Thinking Under Extreme Conditions: From Political Philosophy to the Forcing of Politics. A Contemporary Reflection on Book VI of Plato’s Republic

• Authors: Gava Jean-François
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

According to Aristotle, rhetoric stands in the midst of reason and violence. In con-temporary coordinates, this means that there is a mode of action extraneous to reason, which is violence. Up to now, one could plea that the very exercise of reason was noth-ing but action, autotelic activity. Thus the opposition between action and thought was a fake one. Repatriating à la Oswald Ducrot all reason to practical reason allowed us to think on thought as acting. This was the answer to the impracticability of violence. However, action as a mere discourse conceived as auto/hetero transformational practice in itself will not help. We need to take back into consideration action as something ex-traneous to pure/practical reason, to discourse. But this is not violence of the old type. Both the old irenism of the workers’ movement and the armed counter-state as the spec-ular image of the state, supposed to wipe away the latter from the historical stage in the name of universal emancipation, are impracticable. Modern barbarity will soon get rid of the human species unless a new form of vio-lence is found able to compete with the state, without turning into a new form a state. This new form is authoritative, legitimate intimidation. But what are the conditions to speak out authoritatively? Are they not distinctive state conditions? Moreover, does authority lie in the form of discourse? If not, because consentment has superseded mere submission, which are the authoritative sources of discourse which, though neither overtly nor primarily conflicting with the state, nor with corporations, could somehow not completely coincide with the interests of it and even work against it, though like it? We would like to examine all those questions.

Keywords

EN

reason; violence; political philosophy; Plato

• Publisher: Instytut Filozofii i Socjologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk; Fundacja Filozofia Na Rzecz Dialogu
• Journal: Dialogue and Universalism
• Year: 2016
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 145-154

Contributors

author

Gava Jean-François

• Université Libre de Bruxelles, Franklin Rooseveltlaan 50, 1050 Brussels, Belgium